Appeal No. 1998-0219 Page 5 Application No. 08/265,000 We begin by noting the following principles from In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. Section 103, the examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).... "A prima facie case of obviousness is established when the teachings from the prior art itself would appear to have suggested the claimed subject matter to a person of ordinary skill in the art." In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 782, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976)). If the examiner fails to establish a prima facie case, the rejection is improper and will be overturned. In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988). With these in mind, we consider the appellant’s argument and the examiner’s reply. The appellant argues, “since the Schuermann reference fails to teach or suggest sub-master stations that output signals such that ‘none of the sub-master control signals are output at the same time’, claims 4 and 9 are patentable over Schuermann in view of Natarajan or Mock.” (Second Reply Br. at 3) The examiner replies, “Schuermann implicitly disclosesPage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007